Developer plans $100M downtown Phoenix apartment high-rise

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Correction:In a previous version of this article, Skanska was incorrectly identified as the construction manager for the residential tower. A general contractor for the project has not yet been named.

Dive Brief:

Florida developer North American Development Group is pushing forward with plans to build a $100 million apartment high-rise in downtown Phoenix, according to the Phoenix Business Journal.

The 350-unit, 31-story tower will be Arizona's second-tallest building. The project will be part of the existing 16-acre Arizona Center retail and office complex, which is currently undergoing a $25 million renovation.

Developers said the addition of a residential tower to Arizona Center will help "define" the existing space and help complete the larger project's goal of offering retail, office and living space.

Dive Insight:

The apartment tower's addition is just the latest construction and development activity in downtown Phoenix. Mortenson is working on an 11-story Hampton Inn & Suites there and announced in March that it would build its own 20-story residential tower next to that project. Pending approval by Phoenix Planning and Development, Mortenson could break ground on the high-rise later this year and complete it by mid-2019.

Christine Mackay, director of Community and Economic Development for the City of Phoenix told Construction Dive earlier this month that the tech industry is responsible for much of the revitalization of the city's downtown. The number of software, web design and bioscience companies, she said, has risen from 67 in 2012 to 265 today.

Many of those workers want to live near their places of employment. As a result, Mackay said, 5,000 downtown, for-rent apartment units in high-density projects have been completed recently, are in-progress or are in the permitting stages.

The trend toward urban living in Phoenix means that a lot of that new development is high-density and centered around the city's Valley Metro Rail system. Albert Santana, director of high capacity transit for the City of Phoenix, told Construction Dive in February that the city reaped approximately $9 billion in economic benefit around the system's stations. The system, which opened in 2008, has already exceeded its 20-year goal of 50,000 daily riders.